Tuesday, September 06, 2011

A Tuesday Post

Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu is defending his department’s handling of the Stanley Cup riots, saying their plan worked well despite the “glitches.”

“We based the number of police officers we deployed on the street that night on experience, information we received, and professional judgment,” Chu told a throng of media Tuesday morning.

The VPD released its own internal review Tuesday in Vancouver; last week, the independent review of the June 15 riot was released.

Three of the police officers on the streets during the riots told reporters their versions of how the night disintegrated into chaos.

Insp. Steve Rai, a Public Order Commander in charge of areas such as the Live Site, was one of the 446 officers initially on scene and talked about how swiftly the crowd of hockey fans turned to a very angry mob.

Rai said the safety of his officers — many of whom didn’t have adequate riot gear — was his primary concern.

“I had no desire to put [the officers] in harm’s way when you have five-pound metal objects . . . being lobbed from 20 feet away,” he said.

Const. Laura Jacquet, who has been with the VPD for four years, was on regular patrol duty before being deployed to Nelson Street.

“It was like a scene from Universal Studios,” said Jacquet. “In those three hours, I’ve never felt like more of a target.”

Jacquet describes teaming up with the RCMP’s tactical squad to push people back onto Granville, rioters attacking police through the haze of tear gas and having metal objects whiz by her head.

“It was us against them. If you didn’t have your buddies on your back to protect you, you were vulnerable,” she said.

Around a roaring campfire on the last Saturday night of summer, Paula Montgomery allegedly later told police, she let her young son have three or four beers.

The Orillia, Ont., mother and her 14-year-old, Alexander, had just finished a War of 1812 re-enactment at Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, N.Y. According to police, the group of 12 or so others were telling stories and making merry before facing the reality of September. Ms. Montgomery went to bed, and so did Alexander. She didn’t stir when he woke up a floor above her and trundled out of the cabin, according to investigators; he told his bunkmate he was heading for the fire, but instead disappeared into the park and was gone until police pulled his body from a few feet of water the next day.

The charges laid against Ms. Montgomery and her partner Peter Cooper — one, if upheld, could mean a year in jail — have cast an uncomfortable light on a strategy quietly deployed by parents who want to demystify and deglamourize alcohol for their teens: Give them liquor at home and they won’t abuse it in rebellion.

“While we’re supervising other children, we know rules [about alcohol consumption] are different in other homes. And so I do think confusion reigns,” said Alyson Schafer, a Toronto-based parenting expert. “I have met as many people that have the mindset, ‘Well, they’re going to drink, so better that they do it under supervision’ as a way of rationalizing harm reduction, as I have those who’ve said, ‘No, it’s against the law and we’re not lawbreaking and sorry that the law restrains us in this way.”

As is now clear, it isn’t. Restrictions on freedom of speech undermine the foundations of justice, including the bedrock principle: equality before the law. When it comes to free expression, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Europe are ever less lands of laws and instead lands of men—and women, straights and gays, Muslims and infidels—whose rights before the law vary according to which combination of these various identity groups they belong to.

It is becoming painfully obvious that our China trade policy is deindustrializing America. Even our latest "green technology" firms like Massachusetts' Evergreen Solar have packed up their manufacturing bags and fled to Wuhan in search of huge subsidies, the freedom to pollute, and a union-free work force held down by jackbooted cops. So how does a "free trade at any cost" pundit slap a happy face on the reality of 10% unemployment?...

Facebook is a classic example of China's non-tariff trade barriers at work. The Social Network is illegal in China, and its website is blocked as part of China's social repression system. Yet, Beijing actively supports the growth of its Chinese competitor Renren, which just had a successful IPO on the NYSE. While Facebook's idea has no access to the Chinese market, American capital pours into a firm that stole it!

Apple Computer has become the poster child for China trade. Research by Greg Linden, Kenneth Kraemer, and Jason Dedrick (from my own institution) suggests that the majority of profits from the iPod and other insanely great Apple stuff accrue in the U.S. because most of the value is generated by Apple's innovation rather than in production. While confirming that labor rates are not a big part of product cost -- the work could be done by Americans with little impact on the retail price -- it overlooks the effect of currency manipulation, massive subsidies (entire factories provided by the government for free), and the plethora of other Chinese trade cheats that make the both the production inputs and the final product cheaper. ...

Googletried to play China's game but was burned. Beijing directed it to censor offensive search results like "Chinese democracy." Though originally compliant, the California firm was continually disadvantaged by induced disruptions to its Chinese network, a blatant public preference for its Chinese competitor, and hassles over its internet "license." In order to avoid the trap Beijing laid for Yahoo -- demanding dissidents' emails and info -- Google disabled services such as gmail. Its YouTube service was completely blocked. China eventually requested that Google also censor "objectionable" Chinese material from its U.S.-based site. In 2009 Google discovered that Chinese agents had hacked their systems -- along with more than 200 other U.S. firms -- and swiped their cherished source code. So much for the advantage of ideas.

Forty Israeli passengers, mainly businessmen who had landed in Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, were separated from the rest of the flight passengers. Their passports were confiscated.

They were placed in interrogation rooms and stripped down to their underwear. Their carry-on bags were checked. And then they were lined up against a wall, forbidden to sit down or use the washroom.

Passengers who contacted the Foreign Ministry said they felt frightened and intimidated.

The ordeal went on for 90 minutes, until Turkish authorities returned their Israeli passports and permitted them to pick up their suitcases and exit the airport.

What were the Turks trying to accomplish by terrifying the Israeli tourists? They didn't need to threaten trade ties. Their Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu already took care of that over the weekend.

The victimized Israelis said the Turkish airport authorities wouldn't even answer their questions. Any time we asked them a question, the tourists said, the Turks ignored us.

It was as if they weren't even there.

And that's the thing of it. The Turks didn't harass the Israeli tourists in order to send a message to Israel. They have nothing more to say to us. We are non-entities to them. We're only good for attacking.

No, Israel wasn't the target audience the Turks were playing to on Monday. Their target audience was the Islamic world generally and the Arab world specifically. Turkey's influence in these arenas skyrocketed in January 2009 after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused President Shimon Peres and Israel of mass murder as the leaders shared a stage at the Davos Conference.

Similarly Erdogan's domestic and pan-Islamic support levels increased steeply in the aftermath of the Turkish-supported pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in 2010. After nine Turkish government-supported IHH terrorists were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara when they tried to murder IDF naval commandos who had lawfully boarded the ship, the Arabs hailed Erdogan as a hero for bravely attacking Israel.

Given how well scapegoating Israel has served him, Erdogan clearly believes it is a no-risk strategy for raising his star from Cairo to Algiers.

But it's not just Muslims that need to confront the dark elements of their faith, says Raza. Non-Muslim Canadians, too, must recognize their liberal democratic traditions are threatened, and government-sanctioned multicultural policies make it worse.

"When I first landed in Canada and heard the word 'multiculturalism' I thought this country was telling me I could enjoy my culture, but at the same time it was my responsibility to adapt and blend into this new culture. It took me a while to realize that official multiculturalism, as promoted by the Canadian government, allowed people to ghettoize themselves. So, I was a multiculti fan until I realized it was doing more harm than good."

That message is, no doubt, unwelcome to those sold on the beneficence of Canada's four-decade-old attachment to multiculturalism.

Thank God somebody said it. The Trudeau-esque political multiculturalism has been an enormous failure. It hasn't fostered a greater understanding of cultures but has created divisions and has allowed practices unthinkable to most to flourish.

During the past fifty years you had every opportunity to stand up and confront government on the issue that “excessive” immigration was having a negative effect on your quality of life, but you did nothing but complain to your co-workers or family. Due to this negligence you and your grandchildren will suffer for the rest of their lives. Due to your failures Canada will have a fully Third World government by 2050, and your grandchildren will be minorities.

Stop and think about this for a minute. Many immigrants come to this country to start a new life, not resume in the land of zero opportunity they just left. We've let everybody down by making this country into nothing more than a jumbled airport.

A monster 21-foot (6.4-metre) saltwater crocodile, believed to be the biggest ever captured, has been trapped in the southern Philippines after a spate of fatal attacks, officials said Tuesday.

The 1,075-kilogramme (2,370-pound) male is suspected of eating a farmer who went missing in July in the town of Bunawan, and of killing a 12-year-old girl whose head was bitten off two years ago, crocodile hunter Rollie Sumiller said.

Let's put this in some kind of perspective. Let's say you are swimming in a body of water in the Philippines. Suddenly, there emerges a huge creature with big, sharp teeth!

Well, that's not so much perspective as it is a frightening scenario. It's scary, is my point.